The labor structure in sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by a high share of informal employment in the rural agricultural sector. The impact of COVID-19 on female employment may not appear to be large as the share of such employment is particularly high among women. Nevertheless, widespread...

We document the evolution of poverty and inequality across Indian states during the recent period of rapid growth (2004-09), and examine the role of growth and distribution in reducing poverty. Robust economic growth has been a major driver of poverty reduction and inclusiveness in India. We...

We estimate a unified measure of inclusive growth for emerging markets by integrating their economic growth performance and income distribution outcomes, using data over three decades. Country distributions are calibrated by combining PPP GDP per capita and income distribution from survey data....

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

Inspired by the current Polish economic restructuring program, this paper attempts to develop a general income support scheme that could serve as a model to alleviate poverty in developed economies in the transitional phase. The proposed scheme has the advantage that no part of the poor...

This paper applies, through a case study on Malawi, a simple methodology indicating the first-round (i.e., price) effects of macroeconomic policies on real earnings of the poor. As the economic program in Malawi has not involved substantial exchange rate action or cuts in subsidies, the real...

An improvement in the quality of public expenditures is needed in many countries, given binding macroeconomic and fiscal constraints, and poverty reduction and distributional objectives. This process involves a reassessment of methodology used for this purpose by countries and international...

Poverty alleviation is typically addressed in financial programming through additive programs that target vulnerable groups but without modifying the underlying stabilization and adjustment targets. Instead, this paper integrates the poverty alleviation objective into the financial programming...